SORROW WOODS (17 page)

“It’s just a short flight, Serena,” Auden informs me, picking up on my apprehension. “We

thought it would be best to get you out of here and home quickly.”

I nod and climb up the seven steps behind him and in to the small, white plane until I’m

standing in a cylinder-shaped room with six shiny seats and two small tables. Auden shuffles forward and sits down in a seat next to a window. I follow behind, sitting next to him. He looks over at me and smiles.

“You look exhausted,” he says softly.

I think I am. I can’t remember the last time that I slept straight through the night. “I am a little tired.”

“You can sleep if you’d like,” he says, “we’ll wake you when we land.”

I look out of the window. “I don’t want to miss anything. I’ve never been in a plane before. I’ve never seen anything other than the house and the woods where we lived. I guess I’ll see loads more of the world if I look out of the window while we’re in the air.”

Angela walks towards us and sits in the seat opposite us.

“Good point,” he says, standing up. “Let’s switch seats. You’ll be able to see everything then.”

I move into his seat and look out over the black road that the plane is sitting on and towards

the glass-walled building that I assume is the airport. It looks reflective and shiny. Within minutes, the small plane is moving slowly forward and I hear the sounds of the engine and feel the rumble

beneath my feet. Auden moves his hand over mine and keeps it there, even when the speed of the

plane forces my head back in my seat and the ground starts to disappear. I watch the buildings, the trees, and the people get smaller and soon we’re soaring through the clouds.

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

“What is, sweetheart?” asks Auden, leaning over me to look out of the window.

“The world,” I say. “I never knew just how pretty it was.”

He leans forward and kisses my forehead. “It’s nowhere near as pretty as you.”

After recovering from the shock of feeling someone’s lips against my skin, I lean back in my

seat and close my eyes. I let the gentle rocking of the plane lull me into a deep sleep.

We’ve passed several large houses already. I can’t believe people actually live in houses that big.

What do they need big houses like this for? Do some of them have ten children?

“This is your street,” says Angela. She turns around in her seat and looks at me carefully.

“Welcome home, Serena.”

“Is your house as big as some of these?” I ask, incredulous.

She nods. “Most of the houses on this street are the same size. There are a few bigger ones

but ours is about the same size as that one.” She nods towards the house on my right. The house she nods at has at least twelve windows and a small balcony above the front door.

“Do you have lots of money?” I ask.

“Serena,” she says in a tone that I’ve not heard before, “you shouldn’t ask people those

types of questions.”

I blink at her. “Why not?”

She glances at Auden and sighs. “I’m sorry, that was insensitive of me. Some things are

private and people really don’t want to talk about them. How much money they have is probably the biggest, most private thing to most people.”

“Oh,” I say. I feel like I’ve been scolded.

“But seeing as though we said we’d be honest, the answer to your question is yes. We’re

very wealthy.”

“How come?”

“Your Father invented something several years ago and we made some good investments.

Those investments have ensured that we have enough money to last us the rest of our lives.”

“What did he invent?” I ask, curious.

Auden laughs. “It was a filter that you can attach to any engine, on any sort of vehicle, and it

filters the fumes, pumping out as much fresh air and oxygen as the trees do.”

“That was you?” I ask, the shock clear in my voice. I remember reading an article about how

it had reduced the effect our vehicles were having on the ozone layer. I think he was labelled one of the world’s greatest inventors. I’m sure the article said something else about how he’d practically saved our planet.

His eyes flick up at me in the rear-view mirror. “You know about that?”

“Sure, I read about it in the newspaper a few years ago.”

“That happened twelve years ago,” he tells me.

Twelve? I’m sure I only read that newspaper a few years ago. I didn’t think the newspapers

my Mother gave me were up-to-date, but I can’t believe she’d let me read something that was that

old.

“I think I read it a few years ago; it might have even been a British newspaper.”

“That makes sense,” he says, “I did an interview for a British journalist two years ago on the

tenth anniversary of the product.”

I can’t believe I actually read about my own father. It’s a little surreal. Speaking of which, the car stops in front of a set of large white gates. I ignore the reporters that swarm around our car and stare at the balloons and flowers that are stuck to the gates. Auden says that the windows are

blacked out, which means that even though I can see out, no one can see in. I have no idea how that is even possible, but I don’t care so long as those people can’t actually see me.

I look past the gates and see a large, white house standing proudly at the top of a short drive.

Like the others, it has lots of large, tall windows on the front of it, a set of white double doors in the centre, and a well-manicured garden that is full of bushes and bright flowers. The grass edges the bricked driveway that leads to the side of the house and four garages.

When the gates automatically swing open and the car drives smoothly up the drive, I see a

flash of blue behind the house. I think it’s water. If they have a big lake, then maybe I can go

swimming. I have no idea where we live and never could have imagined that I’d be living in a house this big and beautiful. It’s perfect and I guess it’s home.

Auden and Angela climb out of the car. I look at the door, but I have no idea how to actually

open it. In the truck you had to wind the window down and put your hand on the outside of the

door to open it. There isn’t any windy handle thing. I don’t even know how to put the window down.

“What’s the matter?” asks Angela. “Aren’t you coming to see your home?”

“I don’t know how to open the door,” I confess.

She smiles and leans back in the car towards the door before a small click sounds out.

“Thank you,” I mumble.

“It’s here,” she says pointing to a chrome handle. “You just pull it and then the door opens.”

I nod. “Pull and open. Okay. I’ll remember that.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure everything out. The police showed us pictures of where you used to

live so we know you might not know what everything is or how it works straight away. Like we said, we’re not going to assume you don’t know stuff, so just ask us if you want our help with anything.”

I follow her across the gravel and stand in front of the big white doors. Auden comes to

stand next to us and puts his arm around both of us.

“The three of us are finally coming home as a family,” he says, grinning at us.

I look up and smile. I can see how happy they are. I can tell that they’re desperate to touch

me, hug me, and bombard me with questions but they’re not, so I’m assuming that the police or

maybe even Janet advised them to keep it calm. Whoever said something, I’m grateful. I don’t want to be mean but this is so new for me, I almost think I’m dreaming. I need for them to let me adjust and time to figure it all out.

They lead me into a room with a set of curved stairs. The floor is shiny and the walls are

white and layered with coloured objects in a delicate, light purple colour. They walk forward so I follow, peeking into the room on my right where I see the biggest table I have ever seen. I quickly count twelve chairs. There’s not much else in that room except a large, glass-looking light and a fireplace on the wall with logs piled up neatly on either side.

We walk into the kitchen and I stop at the edge of the room. In here is another table and some

sort of worktop table with tall chairs scattered around it. I can see two huge refrigerators and a cooker with seven rings. I can’t believe they have a cooker where you can cook so many different

things at once. It must make dinner preparation much easier.

We only had three wooden cupboards at my old house. This kitchen has about thirty. I’ve

never seen anything like it. Even in the back of the newspapers where they would advertise newly

built homes, the kitchens were nothing like this. Not on this scale anyway. Everything is so shiny; I’m not sure if I dare to touch anything.

On the back wall directly in front of me is a wall made entirely of glass. I recognise the garden where I was taken from the pictures I was shown. It’s changed a little but I can still see where the white blanket and the bike would have been. Beyond the garden is the water. I can’t see it, but now that Auden has pulled half of the glass door back, I can hear the noise the water makes. It doesn’t sound anything like my lake in the woods.

“Why is the water in that lake making that flapping noise?” I ask, stepping towards the edge

of the door.

My eyes scan over the smooth, white concrete and a few steps that lead down to bright

green grass.

“It’s not a lake, Serena,” he says.

I glance at Auden and feel myself frowning. “Then what is it?”

He smiles. “It’s the ocean.”

The sea is right behind my house? How can you have houses so close to the ocean?

“The sea is right there? Is that what I can hear?” I ask.

He nods. “You can hear the waves, lapping against the sands. There’s a gate at the bottom of

the garden. The second you step through it, you’re on the beach.”

Elodie would love this. “Will I be able to swim in the sea?”

He blinks. “Of course you can. Did you swim much before?”

I nod. “Most days. There was a fresh lake. We had to walk to it for hours, but it was worth

it.”

After the kitchen and the garden, my parents show me around every room on the ground

floor. I see a living room, another dining room with a smaller table and more furniture, a game room, a bathroom with a toilet, and a study with a dark wooden desk and a computer featuring a large

television screen.

We climb the stairs in silence. They show me a large bathroom that has a bathtub, a separate

shower, and two sinks with numerous amounts of mirrors and shiny tiles. They show me their

bedroom, where my Mother has her own room that is crammed full of clothes, and then they show

me a few spare bedrooms that are decorated nicely but have no pictures or anything in them.

Finally, they take me up to the third floor and into a room that sits on its own along the back

corridor.

“We’ve left it completely plain,” Angela tells me. “We wanted you to decorate your own

bedroom.”

I nod and step back as she pushes two wooden doors open. I step into a room that is bigger

than my entire house in in the woods. I immediately realise what she meant by plain; it has bright white walls and floors and nothing else with regards to colour. On the back wall are two doors,

draped in white sashes.

Auden walks over to them and pushes the doors wide open. The sounds of the ocean and

the smell of salt immediately wrap around me. I walk towards it and step onto a large balcony that spans the entire width of the house, looking out towards the ocean that reaches beyond what my

eyes can see.

“Wow,” I breathe.

“Do you like it?” he asks, following my gaze.

“Yes,” I whisper. “It’s amazing.”

He smiles. “I’m glad you like it. You can decorate the room however you want. We can use

the computer and the internet to find exactly what you want and order it so it gets delivered to our house. If we order soon, it’ll be here tomorrow.”

I’ve read about the internet, but still feel confused by how it all works. I’m guessing it’s one

of those things I need to see to understand. I turn around and walk back into my bedroom. A bed

that’s probably four times as big as my old bed sits proudly in the centre of the room. It has four wooden posts in each corner that are used to hold up more white sashes. It looks like the beds in all of Elodie’s princess stories.

“Right then,” says Angela, “what sort of food do you like to eat?”

I scratch my head. “Erm, I like vegetables and fish and chicken.”

She nods. “Okay, how about salmon with new potatoes, green beans, and carrots?”

I don’t know what salmon tastes like but I know it’s a fish. I’m not sure how new potatoes

are different than normal potatoes and I’ve never eaten green beans before. “Sure,” I say, “I’ll try anything, I guess.”

Angela smiles. “That’s a very good attitude to have, Serena. Don’t worry, if you don’t like it

you can just leave it. I’ll go make you some dinner while you and Auden have a look at the computer to see if you can find anything that you like for your room.”

She leaves and I look up at Auden, who smiles carefully at me. “We’d better go and do what

she says then, I suppose. Are you coming?”

I take a deep breath. “Yes.”

Kaiden

I throw Anastasia’s clothes back onto the bed and begin the usual search for my boxer shorts. When I find them, I slip them up and over my thighs and pull on a pair of black sweatpants. I don’t bother with a shirt, leaving the room at the same time that I hear the shower flick on in my bathroom.

My Father grins at me when I enter the kitchen a few minutes later. “Have fun up there, did

you Son?”

I roll my eyes and sit at the table opposite him. “Sorry if we were a little...noisy.”

He grunts. “It’s nothing I haven’t done myself.”

I groan. He always does this. If I’ve pissed him off in some way, he always thinks of